


Eccentricity

by Lopsided_Nebula



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Bad Dreams, Gen, I just like it when characters tell each other things okay, Juno is getting better but he still has like SO much trauma, M/M, Star Gazing, also giant frogs, and I refuse to live in a world where giant frogs are not inevitable, because this is the future, both of them are terribly awkward, but they're trying, my kink is open communication and emotional vulnerability, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21563539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lopsided_Nebula/pseuds/Lopsided_Nebula
Summary: The measure of how much an orbit deviates from being circular.The path to healing is a complicated one. There are bad times, and there are good. Sometimes they are hard to extricate.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev & Juno Steel, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 24
Kudos: 113





	Eccentricity

**Author's Note:**

> This is set at some undefined point mid-season 3 where these two are still trying to figure things out but they are TRYING. It's my first Penumbra fic so I was mostly focused on trying to figure out how to write the characters. Enjoy!

…  
The view from space was incredible.  
  
Juno was glad for the lowlights of the ship's night cycle. It made the expanse of space before him feel like it was creeping into the observation deck and settling in beside him. His feet were dangling off the upper deck balcony into nothingness, the only sign of something beneath him was the footlights to the staircases on either side. Everything was dark. Still. Quiet. It was… nice. Calming maybe.  
  
So he sat there, bathed in a warm darkness, trying to make his breath come out evenly.  
  
Eventually, he realized he wasn't alone.  
  
He tensed instinctively, still sleep muddled and on edge. Daring his possible assailant to just try it, see what happens.  
  
Nothing was 'tried'. Instead, Peter Nureyev padded up beside Juno almost silently in socked feet and took his own seat at the edge of the balcony a few feet away. He didn't speak. Juno appreciated that.  
  
He appreciated it almost as much as he was trying not to appreciate having another person there.  
  
They sat for a while. Not touching, but present.  
  
Juno's breath evened out.  
  
He peeked over at Nureyev, who had almost certainly been watching Juno from the corner of his eye the entire time. Juno felt his lip twitch, the thief had been stealing glances.  
  
Nureyev took that as a sign that it was time to break the silence.  
  
"Can't sleep?"  
  
Juno snorted.  
  
"How'd you guess?"  
  
Nureyev smiled something sly.  
  
"Though between the two of us I am not the detective, I do have some skills of perception to my name."  
  
He flourished dramatically as he said it, haughty and cocky in a way that Juno would have found infuriating if not for the way Nureyev was letting the corners of his mouth wobble as he said it, hardly trying at all to hide the laughing smile, inviting Juno to laugh with him.  
  
Juno obliged.  
  
"It was bad dreams,"  
  
He spoke before he realized the words were out of his mouth, the echoes of his laugh coloring the edges.  
  
Nureyev froze. Just for a moment but enough so that you'd only need one eye to spot it.  
  
"About… her?"  
  
Juno shook his head. It was an understandable assumption. Miasma was nothing if not nightmare fuel but tonight's demons had taken a more recent shape.  
  
"Nah, something else."  
  
Nureyev took that in calmly, mulling it over for a moment before shifting so he was more angled towards Juno.  
  
"Tell me about it?"  
  
Nureyev looked earnest, in that way of his. He wasn't trying to coax the info out of Juno, or at least was trying very hard to not be trying to coax the info out of Juno. Looking over at a side angle from his perch on the observation deck beside Juno, knees up by his chest, not touching him, but present. There was dim starlight playing in the space between them. Nureyev understood that now wasn't a time for touch.  
  
Juno hummed roughly as he considered. It was a choked, sputtering thing that caught on some catch in his throat that he didn't even know was there. The part of him that was still scared (would he ever stop being scared?) all the time was telling him to look for the angle, what was Nureyev's game, don't let them catch you vulnerable, don't let them know where your soft spots were because they would be dumb not to take that and… and.  
  
And what?  
  
Juno stopped.  
  
He took a breath  
  
He was simply asking. Or no, that didn't seem right, he was… offering. Nureyev was offering to hear Juno's whatever they were - night terrors or something he supposed. A sympathetic ear. That might be nice actually. Nureyev was wearing socks. It seemed an absurd thing to notice, but it stuck out to him. It seemed… honest. Vulnerable even. It was terrifying but oh so tempting. So in the dark light, he decided to take another step towards being… he didn't really know what, but he thought that he might like it when he figured it out.  
  
"Y.yeah. Alright."  
  
Juno nodded.  
  
He shifted his gaze off Nureyev, to the stars, small and shining and impossible. It still surprised him sometimes, that he was actually here, that he had actually left Mars.  
  
"Juno, if you don't feel.. I don't want to force you to talk about something when you're not ready to."  
  
Nureyev looked hesitant. Uncertain even. He didn't know what he was doing either and somehow where that should have been terrifying because if neither of them had their licenses who was driving the car? It was instead absurdly comforting to know they were both hovering in the same vehicle together, hundreds of feet above the ground with no idea of how to get down.  
  
Juno's lip twitched a little.  
  
"Nah,"  
  
He looked down at his chest. His hand was there, not quite in a fist, pressed deeply onto a spot still red from the burns, though much more faded and less livid than they had been months ago. When had that happened?  
  
"I'm just figuring out where to start."  
  
Nureyev nodded.  
  
"I've heard that the beginning is always a good place?"  
  
He shrugged as he offered his response, like he honestly didn't know if it was worth taking.  
  
Juno didn't either. Sure the beginning is where you start the story but where was the beginning here? Was it when he was four and thought he could trust a man once named Jack Takano? When he met O' Flaherty for the first time? When he got the Theia Spectrum put in? When he got it removed again? When he stood, dazed and angry and tired, over Rita in that abandoned police station with his memories still not quite where they should be but not gone either and a dead hunk of metal in his chest and the bone-deep terror of knowing how close it had been?  
  
Did he start with that night? Walking away?  
  
No, he didn't think so. They'd already spent a lot of time talking about that. Now was a time for some different ghosts. Make sure they all have a taste of the limelight.  
  
He didn't really want to talk about Ramses either he was realizing. Sure the old man did some terrible things in general and to him specifically but that wasn't what had his heart hammering in his chest tonight. No, not the old man, but his creations were what were giving him so much trouble.  
  
"Did you ever hear the old saying from earth? About how to boil a frog?"  
  
Nureyev made a face.  
  
"No, I can't say I have. Sounds rather crass if I'm being honest."  
  
Juno huffed a laugh.   
  
"I don't get it either. Rita told me about it. But as far as I can tell, the idea was that frogs lived in water, so what you had to do was dose the water with sedatives so you can get close enough to tie the frog up to get it in the cooking pot."  
  
"Must have been quite the cooking pot to fit it inside."  
  
"Yeah, well It's an old phrase. Maybe frogs were smaller then, closer to the size of a cat or something."  
  
Peter didn't look convinced, Juno thought that was fair, he wasn't really buying his own line either. Frogs were so massive it was hard to imagine one that could fit in any size pot.  
  
"Anyway, the idea was that once the frog was in the pot they'd put water in and cover the thing with a lid to keep it from getting too agitated. Then they'd start heating up the pot bit by bit, till the water was boiling and the frog, poor sap wouldn't even notice because of slow it went. Didn't notice till it was too late and he was already cooked."  
  
Juno's thumb rubbed against that spot on his chest. He looked at Nureyev, to see if he was getting impatient yet. Damn, this was hard. There was a reason that he'd spent so long avoiding it. But Nureyev wasn't impatient, he was listening, with a care. And this. It felt like something he needed to do. Wanted to do.  
  
"I uh. You know how I had a prosthetic eye for a bit?"  
  
Nureyev shook his head in a no, curious.  
  
"Oh well, I did. THEIA Spectrum."  
  
Juno nearly spat the name, he didn't like the feel of it on his teeth.  
  
"Imagine the future mayor as the sedative, the THEIA Spectrum as the pot that I managed to jump out of, and the THEIA Soul as the fire I landed in directly after that turned itself into a pot so perfect it wouldn't let anything in."  
  
"I don't know if I underst.."  
  
Juno knew what Nureyev had been trying to say, he had heard him, really. But his words were coming slick and fast now, he didn't think he could stop even if he had wanted to.  
  
"But see that wasn't quite right. Because what the THEIA Soul did was it built a wall inside my head and all the parts of me it liked were on one side, the outside side and the rest of me was gone or filtered through wires and binary code to make sure nothing the THEIA didn't like could get through. So what the THEIA did was turn my own brain into the pot and convinced me I was happy and safe in it."  
  
His thumb pressed into that spot on his chest, a grounding sensation. He didn't know if he was making sense, his brain was full of a jumble of frogs and wires and GIVE UP CONTROL and he just had to get it out.  
  
"I. Uh. I can't imagine you like that."  
  
Juno leaned back, cockeyed.  
  
"Oh no, I.."  
  
He stopped, not sure how to put the sparking electrical currents that he had been forced to mistake as warmth or the certainty. That certainty. He wasn't sure anything would ever be more terrifying.  
  
"I wasn't anything near what they wanted. Me 'as is' wasn't going to do. So they um. The THEIA it sort of just blocks off anything that it thinks doesn't contribute to the greatest good, anything it didn't like got blocked off and sorta zapped. Anything, skills, personality traits, opinions, memories, they were all hidden and got sparky every time I got near 'em."  
  
Juno shuddered a little, still sick at the memory of himself looming over Rita uncaring and eager. Ready to complete his 'mission'.   
  
"It blocked entire people. I couldn't even comprehend the idea of Rita's name for a while."  
  
His gaze slid back over to Nureyev, a curious sort of revelation occurring to him. He furrowed his eyes.  
  
"I think I tried to remember you at one point. Yeah.. When I was stealing the deactivator from Rita. I swear it fried me so bad that I glitched. Like a skip in a holorecord."  
  
"Oh."  
  
Nureyev looked sick. Juno felt about the same, remembering how things had gone wobbly and upside down and remembering forgetting how things had gone wobbly and upside-down moments after. Being left with only a gap and a profound disinterest in it.  
  
"I wasn't anything near what the THEIA thought I should be, so it just sorta cut out the pieces of me it didn't like until I was a perky little yes man and happy about it."  
  
Juno rubbed the temple next to his missing eye. He could feel his hand trembling against his head.  
  
"They had to do a lot of cutting I guess."  
  
He leaned further into the railing he was resting against. Eyes trailing the paths the stars made. It was so open. God, he should have come to the stars ages ago.  
  
"I dreamt that I'm in this space. Except I'm not me. I'm just sort of nothing. And I walk and I walk. And as I go everything around me is turning to nothing as well. It's all just numbers. And they're mine."  
  
The dream is intangible and fluid, the details are escaping him but Juno doesn't forget the sense of helplessness, the lost aimlessness that was a malicious entity with how pervasive it was. The energy building up with the need to _do something_ and the inability to use it. It just stockpiled itself higher and higher until he had woken up in his bed shaking with adrenaline and the need to go now.  
  
Of course, he couldn't get very far in a spaceship. He'd ended up here after much pacing, letting the strange light of unfiltered stars lull him slowly.  
  
Nureyev shifted, leaning closer and telegraphing his movements so clearly it had to be deliberate. He rested his hand on Juno's elbow.  
  
"Juno, I am… sorry you went through that."  
  
He was speaking slowly, pondering his own words as he said them. Lost as to what to say but still trying anyway. Juno found himself leaning, ever so slightly, into Nureyev's hand.  
  
"Thank you for sharing this with me."  
  
That part startled Juno, he's not sure what he expected, but being thanked? Hadn't really been in the cards. It was nice, as far as surprises go.  
  
"And if it must be said, I think I much prefer this version of Juno Steel to any other."  
  
There was much being said there. A reassurance Juno hated that he still needed, a small and deserved jab at what he had grown past being, a promise maybe? They layered into each other, creating something vaguely close to hope in the air on that observation deck balcony at what passed as the equivalent to 4 in the morning in space.  
  
They both sat there, watching the stars and leaning into each other gently. Neither were willing to break apart, but they weren't quite ready to lean further either. It was a delicate balance.  
  
Hours or maybe minutes later Juno was yawning and Nureyev was trying to hide how much his head was listing to the side with tiredness. They reluctantly withdrew from each other and headed towards the exit.  
  
Juno turned to Nureyev beside him, right before their paths split.  
  
"Hey, thank you. For listening, I mean."

Nureyev’s name was on the tip of his tongue, but standing in-between doors, so close to everyone else, it seemed too fragile a time.  
  
Nureyev looked back, eyes half-lidded with tiredness and smile as small as it was soft.  
  
"Of course Juno, It was my pleasure."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave kudos or comments.
> 
> Come chat with me on tumblr! I'm @lopsidednebula
> 
> I hope you have a fantastic day.


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